Escape Velocity Nova is one of my favorite old games from years past. I
recently dug it up and dusted it off.

EV Nova is an epic space masterpiece. Basically you buy a ship, and travel from
system to system taking odd jobs, trading commodities, and progressing along a
number of different quest-driven plot-lines. It features some very cool
isometric sprite graphics, and some fairly impressively scaled battles against
between a number of space factions.

Of particular interest is the trading system, which is what I’d like to focus
on. A huge part of EV Nova is raising funds through space trading. Here are the
basics.

Commodities and Prices

Every planet that can trade goods will have a different set of prices for those
goods:

Some commodities are pretty common (like Food, Industrial, Metal, and
Equipment.) Some are pretty rare (like Xtreem^tm Rocket-Boards. These are
called “junks” in-game.) For each type
of commodity, prices can range across five levels:

Lower

Low

Med

High

Higher

For a given type of commodity at a particular price level, the actual value is
the same everywhere, so the “Low” price of “Industrial” is the same everywhere
in the universe.

Speaking of the universe… It’s huge.

“Even bigger than fits on your tiny screen” ™

Every blue or red node contains one or more planets that might trade goods. To
make a lot of money, you buy something for a low price somewhere, and sell it
at a higher price somewhere else.

A number of questions arise

What are the absolute best trade runs?

What are the most in-game-time-efficient trade runs?

What are the most real-world-time-efficient trade runs?

What are the best trade run loops (the start of the next trade run is close
to the end of the previous trade run and vice versa, so you can ferry cargo
between two points, or maybe around three or more points?)

Look for the next installment where we try to answer some of these questions
using computers. It should be pretty fun.

By the way, the Escape Velocity trilogy, of which Nova is the conclusion, was
made by Ambrosia Software. After all of this
time, my license key is still working perfectly! I can therefore recommend you
go buy one of your own ($30, worth every penny).

You can also install and play it for free, although an NPC will occasionally
drop out of hyperspace and kill you in the game from time to time. Anyways, I
highly recommend sending them over a couple of bucks. It’s just 5 or 7
Starbucks’ coffees, depending on how many pumps of what flavors..

More importantly, it’s a great game that is not monetized by ads.

If anyone is wondering how to run it in Linux under Wine, patched to run at a
nice large resolution, lemme know and I’ll put a guide up.